The Story of a Cat   By: Émile de La Bédollière (1812-1883)

Translated from the French of

EMILE DE LA BÉDOLLIÈRE

by

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

With Silhouettes by L. Hopkins

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge

Copyright, 1878, by Houghton, Osgood and Company Copyright, 1906, by T. B. Aldrich Copyright, 1910, by Mary Elizabeth Aldrich

All Rights Reserved, Including the Right to Reproduce This Book or Parts Thereof in Any Form

PREFACE.

M. Bédollière's charming story of Mother Michel and her cat was turned into English for the entertainment of two small readers at the writer's fireside. Subsequently the translation was fortunate enough to find a larger audience in the pages of a popular juvenile magazine. The ingenious and spirited series of silhouettes with which Mr. Hopkins has enriched the text is the translator's only plea for presenting in book form so slight a performance as his own part of the work.

THE STORY OF A CAT.

CHAPTER I.

HOW MOTHER MICHEL MADE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF HER CAT.

There lived in Paris, under the reign of King Louis XV., a very rich old countess named Yolande de la Grenouillère. She was a worthy and charitable lady, who distributed alms not only to the poor of her own parish, Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, but to the unfortunate of other quarters. Her husband, Roch Eustache Jérémie, Count of Grenouillère, had fallen gloriously at the battle of Fontenoy, on the 11th of May, 1745. The noble widow had long mourned for him, and even now at times wept over his death. Left without children, and almost entirely alone in the world, she gave herself up to a strange fancy, a fancy, it is true, which in no manner detracted from her real virtues and admirable qualities: she had a passion for animals. And an unhappy passion it was, since all those she had possessed had died in her arms.

[Illustration: The Countess distributes Alms.]

The first, in date, in her affections had been a green parrot, which, having been so imprudent as to eat some parsley, fell a victim to frightful colics. An indigestion, caused by sweet biscuits, had taken from Madame de la Grenouillère a pug dog of the most brilliant promise. A third favorite, an ape of a very interesting species, having broken his chain one night, went clambering over the trees in the garden, where, during a shower, he caught a cold in the head, which conducted him to the tomb.

[Illustration: The Ape fatally exposes himself.]

Following these, the Countess had birds of divers kinds; but some of them had flown away, and the others had died of the pip. Cast down by such continuous disasters, Madame de la Grenouillère shed many tears. Seeing her inconsolable, the friends of the Countess proposed successively squirrels, learned canaries, white mice, cockatoos; but she would not listen to them; she even refused a superb spaniel who played dominoes, danced to music, ate salad, and translated Greek.

[Illustration: Her Friends propose Squirrels, Canaries, Mice, etc.]

"No, no," she said, "I do not want any more animals; the air of my house is death to them."

[Illustration: The Boys after the Cat.]

She had ended by believing in fatality.

One day, as the Countess was leaving the church, she saw a crowd of boys hustling and elbowing each other, and giving vent to peals of joyous laughter. When, seated in her carriage, she was able to overlook the throng, she discovered that the cause of this tumult was a poor cat to whose tail the little wretches had tied a tin saucepan.